Recent history in the United States has exposed a significant absence of a robust method for rapidly establishing large-scale person-to-person electronic communications. This was clearly demonstrated in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sep. 11, 2001 (9/11) and the flooding of New Orleans following hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005. Moreover, Katrina exposed a significant problem locating lost pet owners.
In the case of a terrorist attack, one of the objectives of an enemy, as defined in Title 18 section 2331 of the United States Code, is to intimidate or coerce a civilian population. This was clearly an objective of the terrorist attack of Sep. 11, 2001, as demonstrated by the choice of targets. One element of the intimidation was to amplify the actual destruction by producing anxiety for anyone that had family, friends, loved ones, or business associates in New York, Washington or traveling by airplane. This expanded the domain of anxiety to millions of people that felt the need to contact those potentially affected, for reassurance.
The reflex reaction to call and check on people produced a flood of calls which overloaded the communications systems. Those with cell phones experienced problems with the overload, and rapidly exhausted battery power with no access to chargers. This rendered surviving means for communicating severely impaired.
Moreover, millions of people witnessing the confusion and anxiety of the victims on television realized—but for the grace of God, there goes I. This realization prompted families and businesses to establish contingency plans for establishing communications in an emergency. However, even those that have established contingency plans usually only involve a close circle of people.
In the aftermath of the attack, people in New York resorted to posting notices on walls of adjacent buildings seeking information on others. People wishing to contact fellow workers, neighbors, and others whose communications systems had been destroyed were helpless. In cases of businesses, personnel records were destroyed or unavailable, leaving no systematic method for contacting employees and assessing plans for temporary operations at remote locations. Many of the businesses affected involved finance and world trade-expanding the anxiety to yet another domain involving people worldwide.
In the case of the flooding of New Orleans due to hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005, nearly 4 years later, it was demonstrated that the person-to-person communications system was no better. While the flooding was a result of a natural disaster, it quickly became apparent that a city with portions below sea level could be a potential terrorist target. As disastrous as the hurricane induced damage was (1836 lives were lost), a surprise terrorist sabotage of the levee system could have produced an even greater loss of life and the collective anxiety produced would have been comparable to September 11.
On Mar. 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Tohoku Japan resulted in 15,878 deaths, 6,126 injuries, and 2,713 missing. In addition to the displacement of people caused by the earthquake and flooding, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant malfunction resulted in a sudden evacuation of over 200,000 people within a 20 km radius of the facility to avoid radiation exposure. It is interesting that the US authorities recommended an 80 km radius of evacuation, which would have potentially increased the number of evacuees by a factor of 16- or 3,200,000. In 2012, there were 104 operating nuclear power plants in the US. Data is not readily available as to the number of people within an 80 km radius of each of the power plants, but it is conceivably in the millions.
Hurricane Sandy, also called Superstorm Sandy, affected 24 US states. The most sever damage was in New Jersey and New York, due to the storm surge which occurred on Oct. 29, 2012. There were 131 fatalities in the US. Subways and tunnels were flooded and power was pre-emptively shut down to minimize damage to underground power distribution systems. The New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ was closed for two days. There were 4.8 million customers without electricity, including 1.9 million in New Jersey and 1.5 million in New York. Gasoline had to be rationed due to the disruption of refinery and distribution operations. Seven years after Katrina, there was still no central system for reuniting lost pets with owners.
In addition to war, terrorism, and natural disasters (such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc.), major disruption in the communications systems can result from industrial and transportation accidents (such as train derailments, chemical plant fires, nuclear power plant malfunctions, etc.), requiring immediate evacuation of large areas. On a smaller scale, a fire in a large office complex or government organization would produce a need for rapidly establishing communications between fellow workers and within departments for determining well being and establishing plans for resumption of business activities. In many cases, workers may only know others in the work environment and not know how to contact them at home.
Increasingly, younger people have a cell phone which is not listed in a directory, so even with a full name it may be impossible to contact them outside of normal channels. Conventionally, telephone subscribers had a home phone. The home phone number was listed in a published directory along with the subscriber's name and address. Listings were in alphabetical order by last name. Conventional lookup by name, and reverse lookup by number, services are available on the Internet. This traditional public listing has not carried over to cell phones. Early cell phone plans billed by minutes used, so subscribers purposely withheld access to their number in order to avoid unwanted calls. Since the cell phone is carred on their person, they may also not want to be instantly available to talk to the general public. Addresses for email accounts follow no established structure, and there is no directory, so it is impossible to guess a person's email address without prior knowledge. So, a person may know a neighbor's conventional telephone number that is published in the phone book, but have no idea how to reach them by cell phone or email.
Historically, in the aftermath of a major disaster, organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) set up databases to connect victims with others. In the case of Hurricane Katrina the systems were completely overwhelmed. Thousands of victims from New Orleans were relocated to 28 states. Registration is typically on a one-on-one basis between the victim and a volunteer or staff member. No provisions were made for dealing with lost pets or expediting identification of the dead.
There is a problem of a unique, yet readily known, identification which this invention resolves for the great majority of the population. For example, a person may be known by a nickname, initials, or the spelling may be debatable. Victims may be illiterate, elderly, deaf, mute, or mentally challenged—any of which could make registration even more difficult. Of course pets and property have no way of describing their owner.
There is a problem with privacy of information inherent with registration, which this invention solves. It gathers no personal information in a central database, and the users remain practically anonymous, except to those that know the individual personally.
The registration process is time consuming and the dissemination of the database can be inefficient. Registration requires logistical support and additional relief personnel at the scene of the disaster. This invention greatly alleviates the logistical requirements by dispensing with all registration requirements and planning at the individual level by providing a centrally administered default communications system that is ready on short notice for use by individuals.
The state-of-the art at the time of Katrina is illustrated by a web page by Sharon Keating titled FIND HURRICANE KATRINA SURVIVORS, List of Resources for Reconnecting with Missing Friends and Family, which is incorporated by reference herein. She listed 65 links as possible places to look for information. A similar web page by CNN lists 28 links under Locate the Missing, which is incorporated by reference herein. These two examples show how persons wishing to locate individuals heretofore are forced to search in a fishing expedition through various ad hock databases.
While still inadequate, some progress has been made. For example, following the tornadoes that struck across the south on Feb. 5, 2008, killing over 50 people, the American Red Cross activated a Safe and Well List on the Internet, the instructions for which are incorporated by reference herein. As of Feb. 7, 2008, 4811 people had registered. The required fields include: First Name, Last Name, Home address Line 1, Home City, Home State, Home Zip Code, Current City, and Current State. On acceptance of a Privacy Policy, the registrant my select from a field of 9 predefined messages, but has no option to enter a customized message. Interested parties may search the Safe and Well List on acceptance of the Privacy Policy. Required fields for the search of the registered are: the Last Name and either; the Pre Disaster Home Phone; or the Home Address Line 1, Home State, and Home Zip Code. The interested party can leave no message or acknowledgment that the message has been received.
Note that the Safe and Well List must be accessed by Internet and does not have a telephone feature. Note also that communication is limited to known person-to-known person, e.g., person A may post a message that can be retrieved by persons B and C that have a common interest in person A, however persons B and C have no knowledge of each other. Moreover, a lost pet identified by phone number only could not be matched with an owner, i.e., the finder would not have sufficient information to gain access to the owner's Safe and Well List, and they could not leave a message, even if they did.
Contact Loved Ones is a telephone based emergency communications system. A person calls a toll free number and follows a voice menu to record or retrieve voice messages based on a single subscriber telephone number. There is no security and it is open, free of charge, to everyone that knows the Contact Loved Ones access number, and the subscriber number of interest. The web site recites pending patent applications for the underlaying technology, but the actual patent application numbers are not given.
Google Person Finder is a web based application that was built in response to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake. This was based on the volunteer Katrina PeopleFinder Project, which manually entered 15,200 records into a searchable database. Google Person Finder established open standards for developers in order to make the information more accessible.
Clearly a rapid person-to-person communications method is needed-particularly one that is equipped to handle a large nomadic component which could potentially be millions of people.
In US Patent Application Pub. No.: US2007/0269023 A1, incorporated by reference, Klauer et al. discloses a subscriber method of crisis communications including a plurality of crisis communication points (CCPs) located in geographically dispersed areas. For a subscription fee, and by prior arrangement, a family gains access to a voice message system by a personal identifier, i.e., password. This allows two-way voice messaging between subscribers. While this system has merit for those that can afford the service and make plans in advance, it provides no assistance for those that can not afford the service or fail to anticipate the need, and it would require remembering the infrequently used personal identifier to gain entry. Moreover, it does not provide for communications between non subscribers such as neighbors, fellow workers, church associates, etc.
In US Patent Application Pub. No.: US2007/0165789 A1, incorporated by reference, Hulls discloses a Dynamic Family Disaster Plan with similar limitations as Klauer, e.g., the need for individual planning in advance.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,903,801 to Ruckart discloses a database that associates a subscriber to contact information. The subscriber activates the database on the loss of service.
Many telephone subscription services include voice messaging with enhanced bundled services such as caller ID. In principle, the subscriber could access the recorded greeting and modify the message to update callers as to the subscriber's status, and retrieve messages from a remote location. This would require all family members remembering the access code and instructions, which is typically only remembered by one family member at best. Such normally desirable privacy constraints could inhibit use or render it unreliable as a means for voice messaging. Most subscriber owned voice messaging systems also provide for remote access with an access code. These systems suffer from the same privacy constraints and if the telephone service or power is off at the subscriber location they would be rendered useless.
The need exists for a robust rapidly executable communications method that requires minimum preparation by the individual. Preferably it would be implemented by a single authority or sponsor, sua sponte, thereby reducing duplication and uncertainty as to where to search for an individual, i.e., a virtual pre-defined default communications meeting place. It should dispense with security constraints and knowledge about an individual such as passwords street addresses, etc.
The basis for an identification system exists in the form of pre-emergency subscriber telephone numbers. For example, most people know, or have ready access to the phone numbers of individuals of interest. This would include home, cell, and work phone numbers. Often times even small children and the mentally challenged know phone numbers for family and friends. Even the phone numbers that are not known are probably available through a third party that can relay a message. This instant knowledge of telephone numbers is exploited by Liebermann in U.S. Pat. No. 7,287,009, incorporated by reference, and by merchants such as Auto Zone, Kroger Plus Shopper's Card, pizza delivery services, credit card verification services, laundry and dry cleaning services, etc., for customer identification. The customer is identified by called ID or by entering the well known phone number. However, in all known examples, the number is used to qualify the transaction and link to a predefined database, i.e., prior administrative work is required.
The hardware foundation for a person-to-person voice message and email message system already exists. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,321,655 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,330,537, which are incorporated by reference, Skakkeback et al., and Frifeldt et al. teach integrated cache systems that provide wide access to voice mail and email services in a unified communication system. Unified communications (UC) is described on Wikipedia, incorporated by reference herein, as                UC allows an individual to send a message on one medium and receive the same communication on another medium. For example, one can receive a voicemail message and choose to access it through email or a cell phone. If the sender is online according to the presence information and currently accepts calls, the response can be sent immediately through text chat or video call. Otherwise, it may be sent as a non-real-time message that can be accessed through a variety of media.Internet email services are widely available free of charge from providers such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, etc. Telephone and data services have merged through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Telephone service by Vonage, Skype, Google Talk, and others are readily available. Social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, Match.com, eHarmony.com, has greatly expanded the hardware and bandwidth resources. Cloud computing and Software as a Service are well established enterprises.        
The problem to be solved is to employ the existing hardware capabilities in such a way as to make the resources available in a systematic temporary arrangement on short notice with no a priori planning on the part of the individuals, i.e., implemented by a sponsor, sue sponte.
The missing link in the art is a method to integrate diverse technologies and a sponsor with the resources to secure, or contract for, the hardware, conduct the planning, publicize the existence of, and sua sponte trigger execution when needed.